CTD in "Unbound"

[MarkusFox]

A month and a half ago I started to experiment with ENBs, starting with Project ENB for Climates of Tamriel. I admit being awed at what it did for my game visually. However at around that same time I started to see CTDs happen when I start a new game. The game would play normally up until a rather specific point and then CTD. Sometimes, though seldom, it would get just a bit beyond this point before it would CTD. Uninstalling/deleting the ENB files and the D3d9 dll looked like they fixed the issue, but today I've run into this again.

 

The majority of the time the CTD happens in a very very specific point in the "Unbound" quest at the start of the game. The part where you've jumped down from the tower to the Inn and then to the ground floor. The locals yell at the kid to get off the road and Alduin lands seconds later. The dragon uses his Fire Breath and starts taking off. This is where the CTD happens. Not always at the exact same position, it varies a bit. For example it may CTD during the Fire Breath shout, or Alduin will take off and you'd begin hearing Hadvar saying "still alive prisoner? Stick with me if you want to stay that way", and on occasion it will get as far as Hadvar getting into the alley between houses yelling "stay close to the wall!" before the CTD ocurrs.

 

I've no idea what is doing this nor do I know why. It makes starting a new game much more frustrating and difficult. And as I said above, I thought it was the ENB at first, but this makes me think its something else.

 

So far I've unloaded several memory heavy mods such as "Moonpath to Elseweyr", a soundpack, and so on. I've even gone back to my Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini and deleted them to obtain fresh ones. The crash still happens. However, I will note tweaks I tried after forcing the game to generate a new inis: I've increased the autosave count from 3 to 9 and I've lowered shadow resolution from high to low. I've managed to complete Unbound 3 times out of 20 so far. Older saves still work with their "normal" behaviors (they CTD at random but I usually can get a good 30 minutes out of them before they crash).

 

I'm planning to upgrade my OS to 64-bit sometime next week, but I don't believe that will solve this problem. I think its a combination of mods, hardware, and ini settings.

 

Attached screenshot (resized form 905 KB to 50% of original resolution) is the approximate point in Unbound that the majority of CTDs happen.

 

Anyone have some ideas of the causes? Do I need to post pap logs or a mod load order?

[MarkusFox]

Suspected cause: UNP Blessed Body UNPB - With Optional BBP Breast Physics (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/14899)

 

Reason: Not exactly certain. The most recent version (2.4 with High-Def textures) shouldn't cause trouble but in Unbound beyond a certain point there is a single female NPC you have to run by that's curled up on the ground in shock and bleeding to death. Since the mod deals with female body meshes, its possible that when the game spawns this NPC it looks for a texture or tries to position the mesh properly and fails. There may be other female NPCs in that area (imperial soldiers) nearby that spawn as well and the game breaks while trying to load somehting it needs but cannot find that is related to this mesh and texture set.

 

Solution: So far downgrading this mod from 2.4 to 2.2 fixes the issue. I've run about 4 New Games in a row and have sucessfully made it past the trouble spot without a CTD rearing its ugly head. This comes down to either not using the latest version of the trouble mod for the entire playthrough, or just not using it until after you finish Unbound. Though it it makes the game die in Unbound, it has just as much chance of causing a CTD in other locations with a female NPC needing to be in a particular spot doing a particular thing.

 

A month and a half ago I started to experiment with ENBs, starting with Project ENB for Climates of Tamriel. I admit being awed at what it did for my game visually. However at around that same time I started to see CTDs happen when I start a new game. The game would play normally up until a rather specific point and then CTD. Sometimes, though seldom, it would get just a bit beyond this point before it would CTD. Uninstalling/deleting the ENB files and the D3d9 dll looked like they fixed the issue, but today I've run into this again.

 

The majority of the time the CTD happens in a very very specific point in the "Unbound" quest at the start of the game. The part where you've jumped down from the tower to the Inn and then to the ground floor. The locals yell at the kid to get off the road and Alduin lands seconds later. The dragon uses his Fire Breath and starts taking off. This is where the CTD happens. Not always at the exact same position, it varies a bit. For example it may CTD during the Fire Breath shout, or Alduin will take off and you'd begin hearing Hadvar saying "still alive prisoner? Stick with me if you want to stay that way", and on occasion it will get as far as Hadvar getting into the alley between houses yelling "stay close to the wall!" before the CTD ocurrs.

 

I've no idea what is doing this nor do I know why. It makes starting a new game much more frustrating and difficult. And as I said above, I thought it was the ENB at first, but this makes me think its something else.

 

So far I've unloaded several memory heavy mods such as "Moonpath to Elseweyr", a soundpack, and so on. I've even gone back to my Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini and deleted them to obtain fresh ones. The crash still happens. However, I will note tweaks I tried after forcing the game to generate a new inis: I've increased the autosave count from 3 to 9 and I've lowered shadow resolution from high to low. I've managed to complete Unbound 3 times out of 20 so far. Older saves still work with their "normal" behaviors (they CTD at random but I usually can get a good 30 minutes out of them before they crash).

 

I'm planning to upgrade my OS to 64-bit sometime next week, but I don't believe that will solve this problem. I think its a combination of mods, hardware, and ini settings.

 

Attached screenshot (resized form 905 KB to 50% of original resolution) is the approximate point in Unbound that the majority of CTDs happen.

 

Anyone have some ideas of the causes? Do I need to post pap logs or a mod load order?

Edited January 16, 2013 by MarkusFox

[Staind716]

You can rule out ENB. While all ENB's will affect your fps they won't cause a CTD. It is simply a post-processing graphics enhancement and doesn't contain any files that will conflict and cause crashes. So you should look elsewhere for your problem.

[MarkusFox]

You can rule out ENB. While all ENB's will affect your fps they won't cause a CTD. It is simply a post-processing graphics enhancement and doesn't contain any files that will conflict and cause crashes. So you should look elsewhere for your problem.

 

Already believe I found it. Look above. Pinned it to a body mesh, or so I think that's the problem. I'm not sure why a mesh of all things would do this (maybe the mesh is mising something, who knows), but using an older version of it removed the problem. As much as I'd love to use the most recent version of that body mesh, I have to do without for now.

[killbot2542]

this solution worked for me too. had exactly the same problem it was UNP. disabled the mods and worked perfectly.

[ShadowWolf85]

this solution worked for me too. had exactly the same problem it was UNP. disabled the mods and worked perfectly.

THANK YOU! I have been ripping apart my NMM trying to figure out what was causing the crash and this did the trick for me as well. I was crashing at exactly the same spot.